And the Ass Saw the Angel, by Nick Cave

Euchrid Eucrow is the last word in crazy misfits. The second born but sole surviving twin, Euchrid is born in a rusted out car to a grotesquely drunken beast of a mother and a browbeaten, cruel, brute of a father. It's mostly down hill from there. He lives in a junk heap shack on the edge of a sugarcane town in an isolated valley in the middle of nowhere. Euchrid is not a good advertisement for isolation. Probably also not a poster boy for Incest but that’s less his fault.

As an adolescent, the abused and neglected Euchrid stays out of the way of his monstrous parents, preferring to spend long hours in the hills by himself. He collects skulls, hair, blood, teeth, scabs, toenail clippings…some his own, some of the creatures his father traps and tortures, some from murdered townspeople. Keeping it varied. He constructs a grotto of his treasures, half hideaway, half shrine… He spies on the townspeople, hiding from their fists and accusing eyes. He lurks on the fringes of the town, watching, narrating and applying his own brand of logic to the town’s goings on. He's a mute, but that does not seem to prevent him from narrating his own miserable story.

The rough, neglected, mostly confused, frequently filthy Euchrid eventually becomes convinced he is some sort of emissary from God. He has never known friendship or kindness, never been an equal of anyone, never been accepted and never addressed by name, save in his own sprawling inner monologue. He is not the only apparently Godly being in the town- the foundling Beth, a child of the town, is groomed by the Ukelites for sainthood. To begin with it’s quite easy to pity the unloved and unlovely Euchrid- beaten, ridiculed and scorned as he is. However, as the book goes on he does become quite a successful serial killer and animal torturer and mutilator, and so the reader’s sympathy kind of dries up. Though he is still fascinating, it’s no longer possible to feel any kind of empathy for him as he descends into a violent, gleeful madness.

And the Ass Saw the Angel is a searing, brutal slog of a novel that maps the gradual descent into insanity of its mute protagonist. The prose is vicious and overwrought; usually shocking, occasionally very funny. It jumps around between a first person phonetic Southern dialect of Euchrid, and an effusive, detail obsessed narratorial voice that fills in the gaps. I can see why many readers have bemoaned its lack of editing and view it as a self-indulgent, over inflated short story, but I found it weirdly compelling despite its bile, and enjoyed picking out the familiar lines that were either borrowed from the back catalogue made it into subsequent songs. Fans of Nick Cave’s music will be able to spot little crossovers between his 80s songs and his prose; the moths trying to “enter the bright eyes” of bulbs from Mercy Seat, the dead first born twin, drunk mother and rural, endless rain of Tupelo, themes and images that keep repeating- religion, morality, madness, responsibility, insanity…He’s such a brilliant little weirdo.

For a first time novelist, an Australian and a guy that was about 75% heroin in 1989, it’s a remarkable, striking addition to the Southern Gothic landscape. An intense, uncomfortable read that is drenched in heat, grime and sweat, excessive violence and rage- the landscape of the narrative is brilliantly composed and the characters that populate it are typical Cave creations- fire and brimstone preachers, garish prostitutes, gibbering hobos and inebriated, inbred hillfolk.

See What I Have Done, by Sarah Schmidt

Loved loved loved this. Is there anything more maddeningly delicious than a real life murder mystery that was never satisfyingly solved?

The book begins with “Someone’s killed Father”. Yes. Yes they have. Killed him so hard that apparently his eyeball was cleaved in two. Andrew and Abby Borden were hacked to death with an axe in their home in Fall River, MA on August 4, 1892 at some time between 9:00 and 11:00 AM. It is believed that Abby was killed first and then Andrew, though Andrew was the first to be found. Their bodies were discovered separately- Abby was upstairs and Andrew was on a sofa in his office. Andrew's youngest daughter Lizzie was arrested for the murders and spent 10 months in jail. After an 90 minutes' deliberation, the jury acquitted her of Murder. Nobody else was ever formally tried as a suspect.

Personally, I had never heard this rhyme, but apparently it is quite prevalent:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Sarah Schmidt spins an oppressive, heat soaked narrative of the Borden Murders, creating a disturbing and dysfunctional picture of family life; an unhappy collection of people forced under one roof, plagued by rivalry, resentment, paranoia and generally very unhealthy relationships. Andrew Borden, though wealthy, is incredibly frugal, a self made man but despised in the business world. Abby, step-mother to the girls is hated by them both, despite getting along well when they were young. They are stiff, formal, apparently insular. They do not seem to connect.

Firstly, the writing is absolutely beautiful. It's eerie and oppressive and visceral in that music-box-music-playing-too-slowly kind of way. It gets under your skin and possesses you and is utterly, utterly compelling.

The story is told using the multiple narrators format and this is an absolute textbook example of 1) how this should be done and 2) what kind of effect can be created when used properly. The perspective shifts between the childish, coddled Lizzie, her neglected, put upon sister Emma, maid of all work Bridget who just wants to GTF out of there and ne'er do ruffian Benjamin, an associate of Lizzie and Emma's uncle. We see Lizzie through the eyes of strangers, the people closest to her, and from her own perspective. It's a fascinating examination of a very unusual woman. The narrative moves through time seamlessly, examining the day of the murder in forensic detail, sliding to the day before, then jumping forward 10 years to the trial and acquittal of Lizzie Borden. Each narrator has a distinctive, tangible personality and voice, each one is a living, breathing person, detailed and with depth, earnestly committing their memories to the page. Their voices are distinct, and unique, their stories are there to be believed or discredited.

The characters then. Lizzie and Emma are just so fascinatingly messed up. Lizzie is the most unreasonable, manipulative person, she completely controls Emma's life and influences her parents' opinions of her. Despite their ages, both sisters still live at home, simmering in their co-dependency and bitterness, never allowing the other to break away. Emma wants to escape, had the chance to get married, but Lizzie would never allow her to go. The Lizzie of this novel comes across as greatly infantilised, spoiled, spiteful and tempestuous, while Emma is bitter, forgotten, longing to escape the family home. She feels responsible for Lizzie, enables her behavior and tries to keep her happy for ease's sake. I was especially fond of Bridget - she seemed to be the narrator with the best assessment of the situation. Trusting nobody, keeping her head down, she seemed to slip unnoticed through the Bordens' house, keeping her accumulating impressions quiet and biding her time. I think she best represents the reader, the outsider, the person with the best objective view. She knows from the beginning that the Bordens are odd, and we see how manipulative they can be from her several attempts to leave, their constant retention of her.

As the narrative progresses, there are surprises, the introduction of unlikely characters, witnesses and developments. Lizze's account of her movements changes, the murder weapon is lots, a sinister Uncle lurks around the house. There is lots of vomit. We are thrown a possibility, sent off in certain directions. However, the book has decided its killer, and its fascinating to see that net close around the characters, to see how they change as suspicion turns to confession. I love historical fiction when it uses real history as its skeleton- easier to mess up, sure, but when someone gets it right, it is *the best* fiction. It put me in mind of The Haunting of Hill house, two co-dependent, sisters, one socially stunted and possibly a killer, the other trying desperately to carry on as normal, shielding her sister yet quietly terrified...also of Alias Grace, as there's that idea that truth, innocence, guilt and identity are very slippery, subjective things and that the same events viewed through different eyes will reveal different things. I loved the inclusion of the timeline and the will excerpts at the end- it just underline the factual elements of the book. So this might be a fictionalised account, but these murders happened, these people were real, the lived lives and had motives and they alone know why they behaved in the way they did.

I would absolutely recommend this to crime readers, to Real Crime fans, to anybody and everybody that loves an unsolved, much speculated about historical mystery. Lizzie is a compelling and fascinating character, her dysfunctional family home the perfect incubator for her obsessions and questionable sanity. I loved the sultry prose, all sweaty backs and heat haze, over-ripe pears and stifling rooms. It really is a stunning debut, executed perfectly, if you'll pardon the pun.

Ruby, by Cynthia Bond

This is certainly not an easy novel to read- the ritual animal sacrifices, lynching, suffering, sex trafficking, child abuse, incest and misery. The novel’s two main characters, Ephram Jennings and Ruby Bell meet once, right at the beginning, when they are about seven and six. It’s a memorable but traumatic meeting- Ephram is beaten to a pulp, Ruby is subjected to a sort of rustic exorcism behind the closed door of a witch-like forest dwelling voodoo woman, Ma Tante. Bruised and bloodied by the boyish Margaret, Ruby’s cousin and sole protector, Eprham will never forget Ruby’s beauty or her braids, and will carry this image of her for the rest of his life. Ephram catches one or two glimpses of Ruby over the next decade in church and in the town, but their paths do not cross again until Ruby returns from New York after 13 years away.

Raised by his sister after his mother went crazy and his preacher father was lynched by white men, Ephram begins as a pious, routine abiding character. Bagging groceries at the market, handing all his wages over to his domineering, coddling and manipulative sister, Celia his ‘mama’ since he was 14. Her only aspiration in life is to become the Church Mother, something that was almost a given until Ephram took the notion to spoil everything.

Ruby escapes Liberty to New York in an attempt to re-invent herself and for a chance to find the light-skinned mother who abandoned her as a baby. It’s unclear initially just what horrors Ruby is truly escaping; her childhood will be revealed to Ephram via flashbacks as the novel progresses. New York seems exciting, glamorous, seedy. It’s the closest thing to equality available to “coloured” folks in 1950s America. It’s not much different for Ruby though- she resorts to the same skillset as she’s always used to survive, detaching her mind from her body whilst it does not belong to her.

Upon her return, accent slightly lost, her first lost spirit in tow, judgemental stares from the townspeople redoubled, Ruby spends another 11 years slowly going crazy. Avoided and derided by the community, she talks to spirits, lives alone on her family’s land, filthy and detached, just wandering the woods and wailing. We later learn that the spirits she obsesses over, hundreds of them, are the lost souls of the murdered children that wander the Piney Woods. One of the worst part of Ruby’s story is that she is by no means the only person to have been used in such a way. She soothes their pain and gives them shelter in her battered body.

The people of Liberty Township, the devout, church-going community, seem to view Ruby’s troubled mind as inevitable recompense for what they see as waywardness, her sinfulness, her unusually pretty face. She’s brought it on herself. What the township chooses to turn its blind eyes away from is incredible. The injustice of it is so frustrating- the men and boys that have abused her and taken advantage for decades condemn her for her wickedness. The book’s most powerful point is the things that happen under our noses that we choose to ignore.

If the reader’s heart breaks for Ruby from the beginning; they are thoroughly ruined by the end. As Ruby becomes more lucid, as Ephram diligently coaxes her back from her spirits and her torment, she fills in the gaps of her life with horrific details. We learn that the ‘boarding school’ that Ruby was sent to work at is nothing more than a brothel, that she has been passed from pillar to post ever since that first meeting in the woods. Various lynchings, escapes and desertions within her family left her without an adequate carer and she fell into the evil, horrific hands of the very people that would be expected to save her. The author makes a powerful point about evil being something that can occur anywhere- literally anywhere without exception. Evil is a powerful and uncontrollable thing, which is made all the more surprising by the ease with which it can be hidden.

Ruby is a beautifully written book, full of a kind of old, trickster magic, evil spirits and the horrific weight of history. But it’s also about patience and kindness, and about tackling injustice, no matter how insurmountable it seems, or how ill-equipped one is to do it. I loved the quiet diligence of Ephram, as he acts on the feelings he has harboured for decades. He cleans Ruby’s house, washes her clothes. Painstakingly and lovingly washes her hair. He listens to things that she has lived, things that she has bottled up all her life. He treats her like a person again, and Ruby doesn't know how to act. Her behaviour is so divorced from her feelings, she has literally no idea how to be act when shown kindness. I liked that there are still good people, who will still do selfless things, even if it is years overdue.

I know I haven’t really done justice to this book- I could never get across the depth of its effect on me. It’s a haunting book that tells the story of a life of such unimaginable cruelty and dehumanisation. It’s shocking and raw and brutal, told in a style of prose that is disarmingly beautiful. I can see this willing the Bailey’s Prize this year (and it would be a well deserved victory)

for its honesty, its lyrical prose and its brilliantly crafted mysticism. It would be easy, with a plot so laden with misery and trauma to become melodrama, but the characters are so balanced and so well realised that this never happens. An incredible novel.

The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood

Spanning the economical, political and social turmoil of the entire 20th century, The Blind Assassin is a sprawling epic about the life and times of Mrs Richard Griffiths, formerly Iris Chase. Wife of a rising politician and admired philanthropist, daughter of a well respected businessman, granddaughter of a pioneering entrepreneur, mother of a wreck and sister of a tragic cult novelist, Iris is constantly defined throughout her own story by her relationship to others. It's not that she lacks the intelligence or the judgement to be her own person, it's just that she doesn't know who she is supposed to be. Living through a time of great social change, Iris comes across as lost and abandoned and drifts through her childhood, adolescence and adult life avoiding making decisions or raising her voice, presenting a persona of simple acquiescence and all but sleepwalking through her life.

Born into money but neglected by her eventually alcoholic single-parent father, Iris and her younger sister Laura have the run of their impressive house- checked periodically by household battleaxe Reenie the housekeeper come cook. Iris is one of the few people to fully understand her younger sister- her frank way of speaking, her literal interpretation of language and events, her oddness.  A bit of a metaphysical evangelist, Laura's trusting nature and warped logic cause her many problems throughout the course of her life and certainly play a part in her tragic death.

The novel starts with Laura's death, then expands into the past and the present. Narrated by 80-odd year old Iris some 50 years after Laura's accident/suicide, the plot jumps backwards and forwards through time. Iris slowly reveals more about her childhood, her loveless but financially strategic marriage, her complicated relationship with Laura and her own weakening grasp of life. Much harder and more stubborn in her old age, Iris is almost unrecognisable from the conflicted and mixed up young woman she one was. It seems that it's just her memories that attest to her real identity, and obviously her secrets.

Within the novel are assorted newspaper clippings and reports, and chapters lifted from The Blind Assassin, the only novel by Laura Chase. A scandalous volume on its posthumous publication, the novel sees a socially elevated Woman character engaging in clandestine meetings with a politically charged Man and conducting a passionate, secret and altogether confusing affair. The Woman is assumed by all to represent Laura Chase, and the Man Alex Thomas, a communist fugitive and supposed Bolshevik that the sisters sheltered in the loft after the war and before he disappeared to Spain to join the uprising. Within this (fictional) novel, the Man is also composing an episodic narrative of his own, also entitled The Blind Assassin; a pulpy science fiction affair, featuring the titular blind assassin, sacrificial mute slave girls, ray-gun toting lizard men and besieged Eastern empires. The Woman waits eagerly for each meeting in order to hear more of the story, composed just for her by her borderline abusive fugitive. It sounds crazy and unmanageable, to have three stories going on at once, all with the same name, but it works (how could it not work with Margaret Atwood at the helm?) and more details are revealed about the lives of the Chase sisters through the fictional novel. It has since been recategorised as an unduly forgotten classic, much to elderly Iris' annoyance.

As Iris reflects back on the course of her life, she gradually infuses her memories with truths she knows now that she was unaware of at the time. Her whole history is shredded by hindsight and missed opportunities, which makes her an incredibly powerful and tragic narrator. A pioneer of her generation, Iris struggled to find her way on an unmarked trail. The bitter and shambolic old lady in her tumbledown house is left as the sole survivor of a legacy of shame and secrets, lies and perversions. She's not above hiding a few secrets of her own too, though, the discovery of which throws the whole novel on its head.

I absolutely loved this book. I loved how complex its structure was and how rich the world of the narrative was. The shabby doughnut shop, the knock off holiday decorations from Myra's tat emporium. I loved the details that made present day Iris so real. The way the three Blind Assassins built upon each other's stories and filled in literal and metaphorical blanks was amazing. Iris is such an insanely complicated character- strong in her own way (you would need to be, just to survive a marriage like that) but also guilty of a lot of oversights. I'm not convinced that she always thought she was doing the right thing, even if she learned to convince herself that that was the case. But the reader can't help but sympathise with Iris for all that she lost and all that she's had to live with. There is not one scene in the whole entire book where actual, physical, real life Iris is happy.

Stunning.

Say Her Name, by James Dawson

A brilliant, spine-chilling take on the Bloody Mary-lives-in-the-mirror legend that is genuinely scary and ridiculously tense. This is the first James Dawson book I've read and I ordered the other two straight away and put the 3rd on pre-order. That's how good it was.

The novel starts 13 years ago with 15 year old Taylor Keane rattling around in her family home- just out of boarding school for the holidays. Alone in the house, she goes to investigate a persistent drip, drip, drip noise in the bathroom and is never seen again.

13 years later, Bobbie Rowe and her prestigious girls' boarding school friends have snuck some local boys in for Halloween and are sharing ghost stories in the hut at the end of the sports field. As ever, the legend of Bloody Mary comes up- they argue about the details, but they know that Mary was once a Piper's Hall lady like them, that she was a weird loner and seeing a boy from the village- and that she killed herself.

Out of her depth with the elite kids of the rich and famous, Bobbie keeps quiet, sticking to best mate Naya, the glamorous American, like glue. Bored by the same old stories and well aware of the illegality of the company, she wants nothing more than to go back to her room and finish off her book. So she's as surprised as anyone when she finds herself volunteering, along with local eye-candy Caine and Naya to prove to mean-girl Sadie that the legend is kid's stuff, nonsense. Saying "Bloody Mary" five times into a mirror, surrounded by candles at midnight cannot possibly summon Mary into the real world. It's kid's stuff.

Needless to say, Mary is very much a reality, leaving threatening notes for her three latest victims, visiting them in dreams, sharing her life and her misery. Haunting them, getting stronger and more dangerous as the days tick by, testing their sanity and their nerve to the limit. Pursued by an anguished and occasionally corporeal spirit, Naya, Bobbie and Caine are embroiled in a furious race against the clock to uncover the secrets surrounding Mary's disappearance in the 1950s in order to set her spirit free and hopefully to avoid meeting the same fate.

James Dawson is a ridiculously talented author- not only does he write realistic teens (more difficult than it seems), but he also treads an unbearably enigmatic line between benevolent misery and malevolent fury when it comes to the character of Mary. Is she a tragic, forsaken victim or a vengeful and merciless killer? The reader knows as much as Bobbie does, as she begins to dig into Mary's past. Her findings get creepier and creepier, and even though the reader is never sure how they should feel about Mary, it's clear she's pretty bloody terrifying.

I loved sassy, carefree Naya, she complimented Bobbie's logical, methodical investigation well. Bobbie and Caine are really relatable, easy to read characters- they're incredibly solid and really believable as regular teens against the world. They're so likable; half resigned to their early demise but still going all out to fight to the end. I liked how they switched between being goofy and flirty, then being annoyed with themselves for flirting in such a life or death crisis...then giggling about it. I loved how normal they were and how realistically they reacted to being in a paranormal, unchartered territory situation. Their dialogue and reactions were absolutely spot on, which I find I always look for in books for teens. When authors understand teens, it really comes across in their writing; their characters don't seem awkward or forced, there's no cringey slang or try-too-hard modernisms. I spend all day every day surrounded by teens so it's easy to catch out teen characters that don't really work.

Say Her Name is a credible combination of The Ring and a traditional ghost story slash detective tale, with added bullying issues, schoolyard politics and position-of-trust abuse thrown in. It's a breathless, tense and brilliantly pacy read that has an absolutely huge appeal. I loved the ending, which I don't want to give away...but the idea that doing the right thing, the thing that anybody in their right mind would consider the noble and brave thing, and it possibly turning out to be horrifically dangerous and wrong is terrifying.

Students ask me for horror books all the time, and much of the time I'm stumped, because they're often not actually anywhere near scary. I think this book is going to be getting checked out a lot in future. I'd definitely recommend it to horror film fans, or readers looking for a good supernatural chill.

The Company of Ghosts, by Berlie Doherty

Talked out of running away from home and a new step-dad, Ellie finds herself agreeing to spend two weeks on a deserted, wild island off the coast of Scotland. Setting off with Morag, a girl she hardly knows from her Orchestra and Morag's family, Ellie is torn between excitement and worrying whether she is intruding.

When circumstances lead to Ellie and George, Morag's brother alighting on the island alone, two strangers begin to become friends. At first Ellie is unimpressed with the corrugated iron cottage, the lack of electricity or running water, the mice, the draughts...but as George shows her the island's secrets and hideaways, the lagoons, lighthouse and smuggler's cave, its wild beauty and mystery cast their spell on her. Before long she is an enamoured with Wild Island as he is. On the second day George nips across to the mainland to pick up supplies. He doesn't come back.

Marooned on the wild and hauntingly beautiful island, Ellie begins to believe she is going mad from loneliness- hearing sounds that aren't there, seeing shadows that can't exist and feeling icy kisses on her sleeping cheeks. For days she puts it down to isolation, tiredness, the wind, the sea...but after a while she cannot hope to ignore the presence of a ghostly young woman who seems to be trying to say something to her.

Ellie feels abandoned by her newly remarried mother and her estranged but beloved father who has moved hundreds of miles away- then she is literally abandoned by the family with whom she is supposed to be going away. I think a lot of readers will be able to relate to Ellie- her grief at the separation of her parents, her struggle to fit into her new life, how much she misses her dad and her frustration at not being able to express herself properly. I think the way that she keeps her head and remains rational, making the best of everything and trying to enjoy her own company are really admirable too.

The segments where Ellie wrote to her dad and drew, sketched and painted the landscapes, her surroundings and all the things she was discovering on her adventure really gave an insight into Ellie's character. She's incredibly brave, firstly, to be able to stare her fear in the face and to quash it by capturing it in paint or ink. She's sensitive and creative and her actions towards the end of the book shows how much she will risk to help someone.

The Company of Ghosts is a really accessible book- I think primary aged kids would even enjoy it. There's something really universal about a good ghost story, and this is full of sadness and intrigue and suspense. Towards the end a dual narrative emerges, the story of the ghost and her tragedy, that winds itself into the present day seamlessly. Also, because the ghost in this book is a tragic, benevolent spirit it removes any real horror from the equation. So no nightmares, no grisly murder victims wanting revenge etc...

It's a well constructed and pleasantly readable book, atmospheric and genuinely chilling in places- the revelation of the ruined shell of the boat, the Spectre  on the previously empty lagoon was brilliant. I liked the characters and the evolving relationship between Ellie and George, and the vivid descriptions of the island and its secrets. It's obviously written by somebody who has quite a mastery of language and plotting...but for me it lacked that little spark of special that makes a Carnegie candidate stand out from the crowd.

A Place Called Winter, by Patrick Gale

A gentle and emotional novel set at the turn of the 20th century about an unacceptable love, friendship and hard work. A Place Called Winter combines the backdrop of the stuffy Edwardian drawing room and the rugged and windblown Canadian Prairies with the effects of the Great War and the steely determination of the European settlers to tame the Indian wildernesses of Canada's frontier.

The novel alternates, quite abruptly at times, between three time periods that show the vastly different eras in main character Harry Crane’s life. The first time the reader meets him he is an asylum patient miserably subjected to torturous water treatments- he’s selected by an experimental doctor to attend his healing residential retreat in the mountains. Then we go back to Harry’s former domestic life in London; we see his relationship with his brother, his courtship and marriage of his wife and the disgrace that shattered his comfortable domesticity. We then see his experiences on the Canadian frontier and his attempts to cultivate his land and carve out a living as a homesteader.

Harry is an intriguing character, deeply conflicted but really adaptable for somebody previously unaccustomed to change. He undergoes several transformations, wearing some personas more comfortably than others; brother, husband, father, outcast, farmer, patient. He drifts through life, benignly reacting to the incidents that befall him and, for the most part, meekly accepting his fate. For the first few chapters of the book it seems that Harry is leading a perfectly normal, if slightly reclusive life of quiet respectability. Entrusted with his father's property and income early in life, he keeps an eye out for his lively and dynamic younger brother, never quite sure who is protecting whom.

Harry's life, however, is revealed to be far from respectable- faced with a catastrophic scandal he is ejected from the comfortable family he has married into, his real reason for departure kept hidden from all but one of the family. To save those he loves from the shame of his exposure, Harry chooses to emigrate to the Canadian colonies- 160 acres of prime prairie land for the taking for the bargain price of three years' residence. Packing up his belongings, he starts a new life as a frontiersman, falling in firstly with an incredibly unsavoury character and then with two neighbouring homesteaders that bring him comfort and happiness and a uniquely convenient brand of companionship.

The way in which the pages just melted away was pretty incredible- it's a gently paced read but the character is so absorbing- the reader just wants him to be happy. I absolutely love a good frontier story- not even joking, that’s my ideal life. The author describes in loving detail the metres of fence uncoiled, the ditches dug, the stones removed and the lumber felled. It’s satisfying just reading about such hard work. Gale makes the prairies seem full of potential and satisfaction, beautiful and unspoilt, but at the same time hostile, particularly towards lone farmers, dangerously hostile in the winters and unforgiving places for women- definitely a double edged sword. There are some uncomfortable arm's length references to the Plains Indians too- there's a sense of guilty helplessness, a feeling that it's sad to evict these ancient people, but what else is a settler to do? 

Gale’s prose is at times both lyrical and utilitarian, depending on the events discussed, successfully emphasising the difference between Harry’s comfortable London early life and his self-built, comfortable but basic lumber home. Sections of the book are quite surreal and nightmarishly trippy- but the devastating pieces align in the end to tell a life's story that is hugely unconventional in many ways, but which has sort of all worked out for the best. I felt so protective of Harry- he was such a sympathetic, innocent character and I just wanted to shield him from all the terrible things that came his way in life. His stay at the woodland retreat revealed him as a hugely compassionate and tender person, regardless of the violence he might have felt driven to in the past. He deserved the happiness he found in Canada as he absolutely always did his best for others throughout the book.

If you likes Jim Crace's Harvest or Steinbeck-ish tales of wheaty struggle, then give this novel a go.

The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber

A stunning novel, quite simply. Normally, I'm not a fan of historical fiction. I find that in trying to punctuate a story with “authentic period detail”, or affecting an archaic turn of phrase of style of speech, much of the time an author becomes annoying and the effect is lost because the reader becomes too aware of the illusion being played out in front of them. The Crimson Petal and the White, however is so ridiculously post-modern, that you're aware of literary techniques and intentional period detail, as the reader has some jaunty narrator along for the ride pointing it out to them. He tells the reader which characters we should follow, who to avoid, and who to take a last look at, because we won’t see them again. The illusion is part of the story and embraced and the whole book becomes some sort of literary diorama that the reader swoops around, peering into houses, taverns and brothels like a doll’s house with the front removed. This alone was enough to hold my attention for the first few chapters, then the incredible prose and the twisted drama kept me going through the following 800 odd.

The novel follows a year in the lives of two very contrasting Victorian women “types”, Agnes; the Victorian ideal, the angel of the home; and Sugar, the archetypal “fallen woman” and the man that their lives revolve around (as does the world): William Rackham, Jr. It’s filled with lust, issues of class, wealth and poverty and of various falls and rises through the social hierarchy.

When we first meet William Rackham, he is a pathetic shell of a man buying a hat and cringing at the shabby disrespectability of his current, outmoded headwear. Scared of his sassy servants and living off of an increasingly meagre allowance from his cruel and unreasonable father, William is out in London spending money on prostitutes that he cannot possibly spare. After a doubly disappointing experience in a mediocre house, he goes off in search of Sugar, a girl advertised as one of the best in London. Enthralled by her unconventional beauty, intellect and wit, he resolves to knuckle down, accept responsibility for his father’s perfume business and become rich so that he can claim exclusive patronage of this rare and exquisite woman.

As his business goes from strength to strength with the canny assistance of Sugar, now his mistress, ensconced in luxurious rooms of her own, William’s life begins to fall apart, despite his increasing wealth, position and opulent lifestyle. His increasingly unstable wife Agnes is showing him up at every opportunity by claiming to see angels and by having loud and indecorous fits in public; his competitors are gaining increasing footholds in the cosmetics industry, his devout brother still won’t take his vows and the servants are becoming impossible to control. Add to that William and Agnes’ daughter Sophie, growing up lonely and strange isolated from her family in a distant corner of the house.

The star of the show, however, is Sugar. I absolutely loved her as a character, though she is impossible to properly understand. Sometimes she seems to genuinely and deeply care for William, sometimes she seems concerned only with maintaining the lifestyle he has offered her. Sometimes she seems to thoroughly loathe him. No doubt she is a manipulator and an opportunist, but she is also capable of powerful devotion and love as we see later in the novel. I found myself wondering if prostitution made an object of her, or if it started her on the road to success. Was she a degraded victim, or did she always have the upper hand? Undoubtedly Sugar fares better than the other prostitutes in the novel- but is that because she has ambitions or is it because she was simply a better, more desirable prostitute? The book made me think about luck and chance, and whether these are bestowed upon a person, or whether they make them for themselves. Sugar never came across as a victim to me. Though she has undoubtedly been abused and taken advantage of in the past, she refuses to be beaten. The reader watches her feelings evolve from rage, revenge and retribution to survival and propriety. She ends the novel as a respectable, self-sufficient woman with independent means, experience and references.

William’s wife Agnes, the doll like, pale and beautiful trophy wife is languishing at the other end of the social spectrum. The stepdaughter of a lord, she is a good catch by the second-son William, but he comes to feel that, when he is successful, he has been short changed by her delicate health, her unstable nerves and her apparent insanity, also by her apparent inability to provide him with an heir. Agnes is the other type of Victorian staple- the crazy wife that needs caring off to an asylum. Wife, prostitute, kept woman or servant. They are the four options for female roles as presented by this novel and by history.

William Rackham is characterised mostly by greed and a constant compulsion to want what he can’t have. When he is poor, he craves wealth and Sugar. When he has wealth and as much of Sugar as he could ever desire, he doesn't want it anymore. He wants family, something he neglected when he had it in pursuit of mistresses and fortunes. He’s a contradictory character, both pathetic and likable to begin with, before taking a nose dive into unforgivable tyranny.

The Crimson Petal and the White is a brilliantly crafted beauty of a novel, full of grotesques and beauties, visions and dreams and rises and falls. It never feels particularly Victorian in tone- Sugar is too worldly to feel 19^th Century and the rest of the characters feel quite contemporary. Whilst the book is obviously set in the mid Victorian era, it never becomes bogged down in replicating the Victorian novel, though it does recreate Victorian London in all its squalor or luxury. I loved the constant switches in protagonist, the way the reader got to see into the deepest and most hidden corner of the characters’ brains and I the plot was incredibly pacy, without being hugely complex. The whole novel builds up to a dramatic episode at the end, but provides no conclusion, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions to a number of incidents.

Brilliant writing, brilliant characters and brilliant plotting.